Frequently Not-Asked Questions

Very few people ask questions about the site, so I thought I’d engage with imaginary questions instead.

Who are you and what is all this?

My name is Felicity Shoulders, and this is my blog. I am a published author, and for as long as I can recall, an avid scribbler and full-time fangirl. This blog started in 2003, so it long predates any pretense to respectability my publication has inspired. In fact, I nursed initial hopes of keeping my blog hidden, so that the reading public, if they looked me up, would see me as a serious artiste. Well, so much for that. I admit it: I’m pretty silly, I rant about comic books and develop far-fetched conspiracy theories I attribute to figments of my imagination. I doubt I would have been able to keep up this ‘dignified’ thing very long, anyway.

Is this your official website?

Nope, felicityshoulders.com is my Official Website. Over there you’ll find that some of my stories are available in full. Soon there should be audio versions of one or two, as well.

Why did you take some of your stories off the website?

I started taking down some of the fiction I had written for faerye.net before I got my first personal rejection, let alone that Golden Ticket. Faerye.net was important in making writing part of my everyday life and in building my confidence that people might want to read my words, and many of the things posted here are basically exercises. A few things I wrote for this site, however, have some potential, once revised, for ‘real’ publication. As my literary fairy godmother pointed out, no publisher will want to publish something that is available for free already; and some won’t even touch it if it has been on the web a long time previously. I don’t want to completely remove the fiction from faerye.net, or stop using it as a writing playground, so faerye.net has and will continue to have my serials. The serial form is pretty unusual these days, and I think it’s perfectly suited to the web.

Is the fiction on here representative of your other work?

Not in the least. As I said, I used Faerye.net as a writing playground for years. The archives here include exercises, nonsense, and experimentation. Most of it has never been revised (beyond simple proofreading) and will never be. These are snapshots of my writing education, one-off jokes from my brain, and études in style or concept.

I remembered an article here, and I can’t find it now. What gives?

In addition to the articles I’d deleted over the years (place-holders, promises to post soon, et c.) I’ve pruned a few things from the archives that seemed devoid of entertainment value, embarrassing in retrospect, irrelevant today, and so forth. I may admit I’m silly, but I do have some standards!

I’ve been so entertained by your website I simply must send you an appreciatory present! How can I do so?

(Did I mention these were questions no one asks?) If you want to send me something, how about “Virtual Credit” from my favorite bookstore? You can send Powell’s dollars directly to my e-mail address or see my Powell’s wishlist here. Or I suppose there’s always my Amazon Wish List. If you’d rather buy things for yourself, you could buy spiffy T-shirts from Threadless via this link, or books and movies from the aforementioned Powell’s Books via this link — I get a little store credit if you do!

What is your favorite series of books?

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. Books that grow up with you, acquire more meaning every time you read them, and which taught me at a very young age that fantasy can in fact be meaningful literature. The Chronicles are as close as books can be to a best friend or a sibling.

What is your favorite movie?

Amélie and Blade Runner share the honors, which I suppose says a lot about my personality. Other favorite movies include Empire Strikes Back, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, The Dark Crystal, Intolerable Cruelty, Dead Again, The Incredibles, Serenity, Inception and Aliens.

Why ‘faerye net’?

I love faeries. I love the folk tales, the wishes, the mischief and evil deeds. I love to believe that there still lurks under the civilized patina of our world something wild and untameable. Since perhaps age eight, I recall claiming to be a fairye. Some of my more fanciful friends used to encourage me in this by saying it explained my kooky behavior, shifts from seelie to unseelie comportment, flights of imagination, et c. ‘Faerye’ is a spelling I concocted for my own use and have found very few other places (some version of Spencer, I think) Hence, faerye.net.

When I bought the domain, I had no idea how many times I’d be spelling it for retail employees.

Why don’t you choose a spelling of ‘fairy’ and stick with it?

As seen in the previous question, I tend to vary spellings of ‘fairie’ a great deal, even within individual articles. I consider the word by its nature exempt from standardized spelling. It’s a shapeshifting word.